It will go down in history as the “Bah! Humbug!” address.
But this was not an address by a self-confident man dishing out Christmas presents to the nation. It smacked of desperation from one who can feel the December windchill of opinion polls – a Reuters/ Ipsos poll on Tuesday showed just 33% of US adults approve of how Trump has handled the economy – dissent in his own Republican ranks and the Jeffrey Epstein files looming on Friday.
The speech also revealed Trump’s need for a reliable foil. Over the years Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been useful nemeses for a man and movement defined less by what they are for than what they are against.
So, 33% of Americans are terminally stupid.
The sad thing is I’m fine with the 33% who are slack-jawed morons. It’s inevitable that any segment of a population is going to fall somewhere on the bell-curve.
We can fix stupid. That’s where the term comes from “I rather be lucky than smart.” You can actually correct stupidity in yourself or in your population with effort and management. Or at least keep them directed at the right targets.
Our real ire here, the people we need to be making their lives absolute hell night and day are the grifters, the pundits, the streamers and youtube influencers and right-wing radio hosts, the science-deniers and “just asking questions” nazis and of course, the tens of thousands of paid propaganda-spreaders on twitter, people who live in other countries and have no stake in our future and just work every day at getting their talking points shared and clipped for a few dollars. Enough to live on in places like India.
If it wasn’t for those people, that 33% would still be stupid, but they would be less afraid, less reactionary, less focused on new, invented targets.
We’ll never fix it entirely, we’re a primitive and unevolved species broadly, but we could do a LOT better at managing our own living space if we unified and targeted the right problems.